Google Doubles Down On AI Search Integration
Google started the release of their June 2025 core update on the 30th of June, and it ran for just over two weeks, concluding on the 17th of July. The update focuses heavily on new ways in which Google can determine the value of a website, using AI not just to understand text contextually, but to look at websites in the same way humans do.
This means website owners and SEO professionals need to revisit some of their designs and content strategy to ensure they align with the weight of these ranking factors.
In this article, I’ll discuss how this update affected the websites I’m working on, where I’ll be focusing, and share some of my thoughts on the effectiveness of these changes, how long I think they’ll last, and which areas to focus on post-update.
Key Takeaways
- AI now interprets your page more like a human. Visually and contextually.
- Optimize visuals and videos for AI comprehension, not just human eyes.
- AI Overviews (AIOs) now prioritize multimodal answers.
- It’s more important than ever to get your brand name out there.
Table of Contents
Significant Changes In This Update
With this update being fairly large, let’s break it down in an easy-to-read way. First, I’ll cover the most important topics for both site owners and SEO professionals, and how I’ll be responding to these changes. Then I’ll discuss smaller parts of the update to consider.. I don’t think it’s wise to give advice early on after an update, as much of what we learn about SEO is constantly evolving. After all, Google only publishes limited data on these updates. It’s up to us SEO individuals to look at the data, do tests, and come to our conclusions.
Introduction of MUVERA (Multi-Vector via Fixed Dimensional Encodings)
By far the most significant part of this update is the new MUVERA integration. This allows AI to look at your website in ways that were never possible before. MUVERA does much of what Google has always done with algorithms, but uses a more sophisticated AI model to do this evaluation, rather than its older, standard algorithm.
Since MUVERA now interprets pages differently, there has been a lot of volatility in the rankings. You may see pages drop off while others gain after the update; a lot of that has to do with the inclusion of MUVERA.
We don’t quite know everything about MUVERA yet, especially about its integration with Google’s SERPs, but we’ll learn more with time.
There is also a lot of talk about this update hitting AI content, but it’s tough to tell whether this is because the content is AI or whether it’s just lacking enough value, by being generic. Historically, Google has said they do not punish AI content – but this may be changing. Time will tell.
How I’m Responding
First, I’ll be investigating which pages were affected by the update. Seeing which were the biggest losers can give insight into where that content fell short. From what I’ve been seeing, pages which dropped are those that were quite thin, only covering a broad topic. Pages that saw improvements were those that had deep, engaging, but also easily scannable content.
I’ll then be focusing on long-tail keywords, ensuring that the page is well-optimized, clear, and easy to scan. Since MUVERA is capable of extensive analysis, I’ll also be making sure all the Is are dotted and Ts crossed when it comes to things like metadata, schema, and on-page navigation.
A Focus On Illustrative Multimedia & Design
Text-only content is taking a back seat. Google’s AI is now looking for websites that showcase comprehensive multimedia related to the topic being discussed. This may include things like an illustrative video showing a product’s features. These qualifiers have been around for a while, but now with AI integration, it becomes more important than ever to be able to tackle this low-hanging fruit.
This will give ecommerce site owners preference if their products feature more unique imagery, showcasing different angles of the product. Regardless of the type of content you’re working on, consider how comprehensive the page is, not just your text, but your media too.
Historically, Google would look for infographics and other on-page media, but they weren’t very good at analyzing their content. That’s where the new AI integration changes things. It can fact-check your graphics, look into your videos, and see how it aligns with your text content and much more…
How I’m Responding
In cases of large updates like this, I find setting a strategy is the best approach. First, I’ll be auditing my pages, giving preference to those negatively impacted by this update. On these pages, I’ll
With my affiliate websites, I’m going to first be focusing on low-hanging fruit. Simple things, like making sure all my images have the correct alt tags and that they’re optimized for AI. I’ll also be recording new video content for review pages, making sure I don’t just showcase the product on social media, but also within my own content.
Schema data is also more important than ever, meaning I’ll need to make sure every element on my pages is properly schema-marked.
E-E-A-T Is More Important Than Ever
E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is a significant ranking system in Google’s SERPs, and over the last 5 years, the company has placed more and more focus on being an authoritative source, a trusted business. E-E-A-T is quite comprehensive and includes signals like the author and their published works, brand mentions on other websites, whether your website is linked to as an authoritative source, etc.
It’s vital to focus on E-E-A-T in 2025, especially with the new algorithm. But it’s a long game that takes significant time and effort, especially for smaller businesses that haven’t reached the tipping point where organic references become easy to get.
How I’m Responding
I’ll be working with our writers to re-evaluate their biographies and credentials on the websites they’re authors on, highlighting their skillset and showcasing their experience and expertise.
Similarly, I’ll look at adding additional source links to websites that I may have references or learned from in the writing process.
On websites where products are being tested, I’ll be putting more emphasis on showcasing my knowledge around the products. This will include highlighting small, unique features that the average layman may not immediately consider. I’ll also be showcasing how we test the products, being transparent about the testing process and how we come to our conclusions.
Even More AI Overviews
AI overviews have taken over Google’s SERPs in the last year, and since the June core update, it’s only gotten worse for website owners, who now see significantly more zero-click searches where their pages rank well, but their traffic still drops. Close to 60% of searches now have an AI overview, with Google taking its prime SERP location for its own promotions – it means we need to think differently about SEO.
How I’m Responding
Instead of solely targeting high-ranking SERP results, I’ll be specifically looking to improve my website’s performance within Google’s AI overview. This means tackling commonly asked queries in ways that are easy for AI to understand and present to the user, while also still being comprehensive enough to be considered a worthy authority.
Since the top five positions are seeing fewer clicks than ever, I’ll also focus on my snippets and titles to improve click-through rates.
Smaller Tweaks Made During This Core Update
These smaller parts of the update may not be as important to focus on, but should still be given time. Especially as many of these are
Core Vitals (Pagespeed) & Mobile Optimization
By now, I hope you’ve got a polished mobile website, because Google has been focusing on this for years now. In the June 2025 Core Update, this became even more important. Optimized mobile pages need to be more than just readable; they need to be well-structured, easy-to-scan, and load quickly.
These all play into the user experience, and having a slow website, or one with broken elements on mobile is an easily avoidable problem, a real low-hanging fruit for SEO.
How I’m Responding
I make sure all my websites are always optimized for speed, so I don’t need to do anything there, but I recommend running a speed test on your website and making sure it’s performing up to Google’s standards. Don’t accept anything less than a 90% score on Pagespeed Insights.
I’ll be spending time making sure my mobile optimization is the best it can be, fixing small alignment issues that may play into brand perception, and making sure tables are responsive, for example.
A Focus On Freshness Of Content
It’s easy to put up a piece of content and leave it. At first, it does okay, but over time, it decays. Google devalues older content, particularly if it isn’t an evergreen topic. This means you can’t just throw up an article on the five best places to go eat out in 2024 and then just leave that article unaddressed for years into the future.
Google gives preferences to articles that are updated regularly, as the topic evolves. For instance, the 5 best televisions this year are significantly better than those offered at the same price 3 years ago.
Don’t just revisit old monetized content, but also spend time going through your website and seeing if anything is dated.
How I’m Responding
Content updates are a regular part of my workload already, as it’s a standard SEO practice. But with the added emphasis, I’ll be trying to get through more article refreshes than usual. This can sometimes be a timely exercise, as content piles up over time and an article with over 1000 articles will have a tough time rehashing every article without a large team.
I’ll be focusing on articles that historically did well and then dropped off in this update. I’ll refresh the content on the pages, making sure to include everything I’ve learned about this update and how it’s being viewed. The goal here isn’t to game the system, but to have it guide us. It can highlight areas of user experience we may not have considered before.
Boons For Video Creators
You may have noticed how many YouTube videos are now pushed to the top of Google’s SERP page, even when you weren’t necessarily searching for a video. This is part of the company’s focus on pushing video content. Of course, YouTube is owned by Google, so it makes sense that they want to keep the user in their online ecosystem.
If you focus primarily on written content, now may be the time to expand into video content. You can always embed it on your articles, which is a strong signal for Google, and when paired with high-quality imagery, can easily change how Google sees a webpage and its value.
How I’m Responding
I’ll be putting more effort into video content and embedding that content on my website. This will need to be calculated, but in topics like product reviews, this is a very useful boon to your content. One of the reasons why is the new AI integration, which can contextually analyze a video and weigh the contents against your textual content.
When producing these videos, I will carefully consider how my topics address common pain points or areas of concern that viewers would want to know about. Not only does this boost the helpfulness to the reader, but it also lets MUVERA’s video analysis see that you’re tackling common queries.
How This Update Affected My Websites
It’s one thing to speculate about the possible impact of a Google SERP update, but the best way to gauge its impacts is to get a first-hand view on how it impacted websites. Since I manage multiple websites across various niches, I wanted to give you some direct insight into what I’ve been noticing on the portfolio I’m working with.
The Winners
- Smaller sites that haven’t seen much work.
- Easy-to-navigate sites that are intuitive to browse.
- Pages with authors that showcase their authority.
- Sites that have schema markup for their articles and products.
- Sites that were hit by the previous helpful content update often saw gains.
The Losers
- Pages that lack easy navigation.
- Sites that relied too much on long-tail search queries.
- Pages that were AI-generated, without much thought to their structure and uniqueness.
- Websites with thin content that didn’t add anything new.
Overall, this update was an unusual one. Some websites that have strong, engaging, and hands-on content saw a dip – but this dip seemed closely related to sites with excessive AI content. This is important for businesses that have considered AI as a quick and easy way to save money while increasing content velocity.
The websites that saw the biggest gains were those severely hit by Google’s previous helpful content update. The HCU hit a lot of sites in ways that we SEO professionals still don’t fully understand. Now it looks like some of those issues have been balanced out a bit better, and better represent where these websites should be ranking.
What To Do If Your Website Was Hit
First, avoid knee-jerk reactions. The SERPs remained volatile more than a week after the update ended. This is the time to investigate, digging deep into your analytics and plotting out which of your pages were the biggest winners and the biggest losers. Using tools like AHREFs is great for this.
Once you’ve captured your biggest winners and losers, go and examine what separates these pages from each other. Do they approach their topics differently? Do they have different authors? Is your content structure the same?
This will give you an idea of where to concentrate. Don’t forget, you should also see what other website pages that rank well for the same topic are doing. Are they being carried by authority, or is there something really good about the way they approach their content?
Alternatively, reach out to me and I’ll do this work for you, making sure it’s ready for this new era of Google SERPs.
Thoughts About The June 2025 Core Update & The Future of Google’s SERP Updates
Should you be worried about the June 2025 Core Update? Not worried, but aware.
It’s not the harshest update I’ve ever seen. But then again, I was already working in the SEO industry when Google’s notorious Panda update hit.
The update itself aligns with what we’ve been expecting from Google. They’ve been telling us for a while now that their intention is solely to surface content that resonates with their users. Google wants to serve truly helpful web pages that are well-optimized and easy to use.
The additional integration of AI poses challenges for all website owners, which is why now more than ever it’s important for even relatively small businesses to think beyond simply creating ChatGPT content and hoping for the best.
